Thursday, 22 September 2011

I know what you're thinking. No new release for more than a week. Perhaps it's dead Jim? No, it's not. It's chugging along fine. I've been tinkering with one of the features requested most: beatslicing. It's working pretty well, given the UI restrictions (did not really plan for it in the original gui).

Saturday, 10 September 2011

So, work continues. I've been given some nice bug reports these last few days, all fixed. Another way of saying 'expect a 0.9.06 very soon'.

Amongst the issues identified where things relating to malformed saved files (both tx-files and FXB/host chunks). While rectifying this I got thinking on the current state of saving TX-format performance/program files:
Right now, the name of a program/performance
is actually fully separated from the file name on disk when saved. The
reasons for this is are mainly

File names have character restrictions that are annoying for program names.

The XML is embeddable, i.e does not have to come from file

A perhaps somewhat unintuitive result of this is however that if you
create a program, name it Monkey, then save it. TX will now suggest
the file name Monkey.txprog.
So far so good. However, if you now
rename the program to Elephant and choose 'Save Program' again, the
file name will not change. It will still be Monkey.txprog (since the
program was previously assigned a file path).
Even 'Save As' will still
suggest Monkey.txprog. While logical and following the rule of
separation of name and file, it might also be somewhat unintuitive.

How does people feel it should work? I could tie the file name to the
program name, so that every time you change the name, the remembered
file path is changed as well (as with waves); not a big change. But
what should happen if you choose 'Save As'? Should the name of the
program change when changing the saved path as well? And by extension: should program names thus be restricted to valid file name characters? (i.e. no ':', '/', '\', '<' etc)

I'm having a hard time deciding whats best here. Suggestions appreciated.
Cheers

Thursday, 8 September 2011

Moving on rapidly, v0.9.04 is now available for download. Lot's of bug fixes, including the fix for broken file dialogs on Windows XP, and perhaps the most requested item of all: The Quick Start Guide.
By no means complete, this document still gives some insights and hints on how to use the instrument and build sound sets.

Monday, 5 September 2011

New update. This time with a lot of features and bugfixes. I hope I haven't introduced as many new ones this time around.
New and noteworthy:

Added loop start & end modulation

Added glide modulation

Made mono mode handle held notes correctly

Fixed broken XSD definitions for polyphonic modes

Fixed wave start modulation units

Fixed "goto" in sample editor

Fixed sample editor update on drag&drop of samples

Tweaked resonance of filter to be a little less loud&aggressive.

Reduced automatable program slots to 32

Added 48 assignable automation parameters

Please take note of the last two bullets. I previously wrote about changing how automation works. This is perhaps some sort of middle ground between previous way and what I talked about in an earlier post. Basically now you can assign an automation parameter (global) as a modulation source in one or more groups where you might otherwise use an external controller. They idea is to help those with hosts that do not allow for automation curves using midi controllers.

There is now also modulation destinations for wave start,loop start+end and glide. All these are Note-on modulation, i.e the value is determined on sample trigger.

Note:The filter resonance has been scaled back a bit. It's less prone to overdrive and feedback sounds now. I personally think it sounds more useful. But obviously, any filter settings made with previous versions will sound a bit different. Let me know your opinion.

I am currently working on a quick start guide for TX16Wx. 'tis heavy work. We shall see if I can finish this week.

Contributors

Disclaimer

This software draws inspiration from many sources, but mainly the Yamaha TX16W Sampler running the NuEdge Typhoon OS. This software is not affiliated with Yamaha Corp. or NuEdge development, nor does it intrude on any copyrights.